Recent WHAM News

January, 2011

We have obtained H-alpha data for over 90% of the portion of sky which was not visible from the northern hemisphere.
The image on our home page will show our reduction progress on the southern extension.

At the AAS meeting in Seattle in January 2011, our group and collaborators presented six posters:

UW-Madison undergrad Nitish Chopra presented approximately 50% of the southern
survey extension in a preliminary reduction, including channel maps now spanning
±30° about the whole Galactic Plane. [PDF]

Alex showed some of the first results from his work adding magnetic fields to the
supernova-driven ISM simulations of Joung & Mac Low. [PDF]

Kat presented early results from her H-Alpha survey of the Magellanic Bridge. [PDF]

Matt and Greg showed WHAM multiline emission from the Magellanic Stream and a
preliminary H-alpha map of the extended ionized gas around the SMC. [PDF]

Cornell undergrad Melissa Halford worked with Ed during UW's 2010 summer REU
program. She presented her work combining [O II] measurements from a new SHS instrument
with WHAM observations of H-alpha, [N II], and [S II]. [PDF]

UW-Whitewater undergrad Martin Gostisha, also a 2010 Madison summer REU student, and Bob
Benjamin reported on their discovery of a new, large bubble in the southern survey. [PNG]

March 13, 2009

Matt, Kurt, Ed, Greg, and Alex have spent the last two weeks uncrating and setting up WHAM here
at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile.
The instrument is already in working order, and we have begun calibration observations.

April 17, 2008

WHAM was removed from the pad on Kitt Peak and loaded onto the truck this morning. We have photos posted. It's been a great 11 years, and we look
forward to Chile!

April 16, 2008

Alex, Ed, Kurt, and Matt have all spent time at Kitt Peak in the past three weeks packing WHAM
up to prepare the instrument for the move to Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. A
crane and truck will arrive tomorrow to take WHAM back to Madison for six months of refurbishment
and upgrades, and we will ship it down to Chile late this year to begin a southern kinematic
H-alpha survey.

January, 2007

Alex, Rex, and Matt attended the AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. Alex presented a poster on his
ongoing study of the denstiy distribution of the WIM and a promising comparision of the
statistics of Hα emission (EM) and pulsar dispersion measures (DM) with MHD simulations of
the ISM by Kowal, Lazarian, and collaborators. Rex presented a poster of his early work on [O
III] emission line maps toward several regions in the Galaxy, including the λ Ori (O8 III)
H II region.

July, 2006

We have been awarded a grant from the NSF to continue our research with WHAM. This next round
of funding will be used to upgrade some of the aging hardware systems and then move WHAM from
Kitt Peak to the southern hemisphere so that we can complete an all-sky kinematic Hα
survey.